text:
POPLARVILLE, Miss. — The exchange lasted all of 15 minutes. But it seemed an eternity for the young couple who had walked up the courthouse steps, hands tightly joined, to request a marriage license in this rural southern town.
"Male applicant would be?" asked the clerk with the highlighted bouffant as she peered over her reading glasses at the pair standing on the other side of the counter.
Kristen Welch lifted her chin and declared the obvious: "Neither of us."
The couple knew their application would be rejected, even before the clerk wrote "denied" in rounded cursive atop the one-page form.
"We're not very different from straight couples you would see," Welch told the clerk.
The clerk nodded politely. "I understand."
Then she proceeded to collect $21 for their application fee. The women stood in awkward silence as the clerk printed out a receipt.
Welch, a 28-year-old pharmacy technician, and her partner of four years, Jenna Lockwood, a 26-year-old Air Force reservist, are one of a dozen Mississippi couples seeking licenses to marry, a tactic intended to highlight the discrimination they say they face because of the state's 2004 constitutional ban against gay marriage.
Encouraged as they were by last month's Supreme Court decision recognizing same-sex marriage on the federal level, gay couples in the heart of Dixie say their joy at the country's progress is bittersweet.
Across the South — in states where gay marriage is uniformly banned — gay men and women say they still live as second-class citizens, trapped behind a web of state laws and hostile political and religious dogma.
But instead of being written off as a lost cause, Mississippi and other southern states remain the focus of grass-roots gay rights campaigns. Among them is one organized by a Harvard-trained minister and heavily funded by a Jamaica Plain church.
"There's a tremendous urgency to push hard in the South with our federal government now recognizing our fundamental equality," said the Rev. Jasmine Beach-Ferrara, executive director of the Asheville, N.C.-based Campaign for Southern Equality. "But the status quo that exists here really has a lot of power, with the understanding that you'll be safe as long as you don't express who you are.''
Among least likely states
Mississippi ranks among states least likely to support gay marriage. Just a third of adult residents are in favor of such unions compared with more than half of the country as a whole, according to an April study by the Williams Institute, an independent think tank focused on sexual orientation and public policy at the UCLA School of Law.
Not only are gay couples in Mississippi not allowed to marry, they cannot legally adopt — even though a quarter of same-sex couples here are raising children together, the highest percentage of any state, according to the Williams Institute.
Nor are gays and lesbians in Mississippi protected from being fired or otherwise discriminated against by employers for their sexual orientation. (A federal employment protection bill is pending in Congress.) Some employers have barred gay workers from participating in the marriage-license campaign, saying it would be "bad for business."
Yet, couples like Welch and Lockwood refuse to move to a more liberal environment. This is home. They know the battle for equality in the South is unlikely to be won politically — at the ballot box or through state lawmakers — or through state courts. All they can do is share their personal stories in hopes that, on some level, their families, co-workers, neighbors, even the clerk at the courthouse will come to understand.
Fighting for freedom, justice
Welch and Lockwood met over Christmas three years ago while working at Best Buy. Welch was drawn to Lockwood's bright smile and dimples, and Lockwood to Welch's wit. They recently moved into their first home together, a white cottage framed by 300-year-old oak trees on 50 acres of hayfield in Picayune, about 25 miles south from the Pearl River County seat of Poplarville.
They say it's the daily reminders of their inferior legal status, both large and small, that hurt most. Welch cannot get a spouse pass to visit Lockwood at the Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi. Nor could she get on Lockwood's military health insurance when she needed back surgery and lacked her own coverage during graduate school.
One set of grandparents has quit speaking to her. In advance of her 10-year high school reunion, some former classmates, after learning she was in a relationship with a woman, have posted Bible verses on her Facebook page.
"We haven't been openly harassed as a couple but if looks could kill, we'd be dead," Welch said about holding hands with Lockwood in public, which they're mindful not to do too much.
Lockwood spent her first four years in the Air Force as a closeted lesbian. She said she had joined to fight for freedom and justice "even though I wasn't always granted them." She felt her first taste of freedom when Don't Ask Don't Tell, the law barring openly gay men and women from serving in the military, was repealed in 2011. Now the senior airwoman says she is adamant about fighting for marriage equality.
Plus, fighting is in her blood. Her grandmother was Margaret "Wootsie" Tate, former state senator, who famously chained herself to a tree, shotgun in hand, to keep it from getting chopped down; battled plans for a landfill when she was ill with cancer; and used the men's restroom off the Senate floor, telling her male colleagues to "tuck and cover," until the state built a facility for women.
Until last week, the gay marriage ban had never been questioned in Poplarville, a 2,900-person town known as the state's blueberry capital.
The heat was already stifling at 9 a.m. when Beach-Ferrara, her clerical collar peeking out beneath her khaki suit, led a procession of about a dozen supporters from the library where they had gathered through the heart of downtown to the court house two blocks away — where the Ku Klux Klan rallied as recently as 2007.
The group wore rainbow armbands and carried a sign: "We Do: Full Equality Under The Law." Members walked in silence as they rounded the corner on Main Street, passing a jewelry store, a tanning salon, the office of the tax collector, when a man in his 60s popped out and shouted, "They can't just walk down our streets like that!"
On the other side of the counter, the circuit clerk sized up the couple before her. Welch was dressed in an oxford button-down, her cheeks flushed from the heat and her wild ruby curls held back from her face by sunglasses. Lockwood, wearing a red polo shirt, looked like a teenager with her pixie haircut and long side-swept bangs.
Vickie Hariel had prepared for the women, having been informed in advance that they would be coming.
Facing the couple, Hariel flipped open one volume of Mississippi state laws and read from Statute 93-1-1. "Any marriage between persons of the same gender is prohibited and null and void from the beginning." She apologized, even as she informed them that she could not issue them a license.
In her 36 years at the court house, it was the first time she had denied a couple a marriage license. The only other legal reason for denial is if the applicants are drunk or insane.
Hariel smiled. She was doing her job. And no, it was not difficult, she said in an interview later. In addition to taking a vow to follow the law as an elected official, she said she also had the moral obligation to uphold her faith. After all, she said, the Bible says God formed man and woman to be united.
"Naturally, marriage from 1890 when the records started in our county up to 2013 has been between a man and a woman," Hariel said after the couple left.
She pointed to the shelves of bound records, with the earlier ones separated into "colored" and "white" tomes. "I would never have conceived that I'd be put in a situation where a couple of the same gender would come in and ask to be married."
Support from up North
Beach-Ferrara, a tall, soft-spoken North Carolinian, conceived of the marriage license campaign as her thesis at the Harvard Divinity School, drawing on the legacy of Civil Rights organizing.
Gay rights activists say that progress in the South has come in the wake of federal laws — addressing school desegregation, black civil rights, interracial marriage. Beach-Ferrara hopes her marriage-rights campaign will help prepare the southern social fabric for change.
Prior to the moment when couples walk hand in hand into the courthouse, the campaign's small team conducts months of preparatory leg work, piling into a minivan and driving through Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, South Carolina, and Mississippi, reaching out to circuit clerks and law enforcement officials to explain what they are doing, "knowing that any of these folks could become an ally at some point."
Much of the support for the campaign — spiritually and financially — comes from Massachusetts, the first state in the nation to legalize same-sex marriage.
Bostonians, through Hope Central Church and Democratic organizers in Jamaica Plain, have donated upwards of $30,000 to the campaign. Church members have traveled south to volunteer as support staff and peace keepers during the marriage license actions, which occur every six months.
"Until people in the South are free, we are not free up here," said Rev. Laura Ruth Jarrett, the senior pastor at Hope Central, a Georgia native who lives in Jamaica Plain with her wife. "Our Scripture says we are one spiritual body."
Sara and Lynn Bell's wedding in Kent, Conn., was picture-perfect. Sara wore an ivory lace dress and carried a matching parasol. Lynn wore a brown tuxedo and cowboy boots. Their hair and makeup were professionally done, as were the floral arrangements.
But there were no guests.
Sara Bell, 31, who grew up in Purvis, Miss., and now lives in Petal, has not spoken to her family in three years. Raised by Southern Baptists — her father was the music minister at their church — Bell was shamed so much for being gay that silence, guilt, and anxiety cloaked much of her relationships with women. "You can only be told you're an abomination so much before you start to believe it," she said.
She hoped that joining the marriage license campaign would "open people's eyes and show that they're not fighting against the rights of monsters." She was sure that if only people had the opportunity to get to know her and see the pain that discriminatory laws inflict on real people's lives, they would come around.
Some have. The board of directors at the health clinic where the Bells worked voted to allow domestic partner health benefits after learning they were married. The couple discuss having children someday. But if Sara Bell gives birth, her wife would not legally be allowed to adopt the child. And if something were to happen to her, she worries her parents may take the child away.
So Bell continues on her mission, marching beneath the sweltering morning sun through the streets of Poplarville last week in her designer heels and seemingly sweat-proof makeup in support of Welch and Lockwood.
She surveyed the landscape that had been her childhood playground and thought of her elderly grandmother, sitting alone in her house nearby. They are no longer in contact.
She thought of the Blueberry Jubilee her grandparents used to take her to every summer, the pecan trees where she hunted for Easter eggs, the market where she shopped with her "Pawpaw" for milk, and the biscuits they would devour for breakfast afterwards. Her eyes welled with tears when she looked across the street at the Baptist church where her aunt had gotten married.
A town so familiar to her now feels so distant — all because she fell in love.
The South as next frontier
Despite the seemingly intransigent attitudes, change will come in the South, gay marriage advocates believe.
A Mississippi poll released Friday by the Human Rights Campaign shows that 58 percent of residents under the age of 30 support gay marriage, compared with just a third of Mississippians overall.
The Human Rights Campaign, a Washington-based gay rights advocacy group, also is targeting the South as the next frontier, with its president visiting four Southern states, including Mississippi, over the last week to meet with local gay rights activists, newspaper editorial boards, and politicians.
"We now have two Americas. Equality by and large has come to the coasts, but the middle of the country and the southern states specifically are being left behind," said Fred Sainz, vice president of the Human Rights Campaign.
Thirteen states plus the District of Columbia allow gay marriage. Emboldened by the Supreme Court decision, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit in Pennsylvania last week against that state's gay marriage ban, and plans to bring similar challenges in North Carolina and Virginia.
Bryan Fischer, director of issue analysis at the American Family Association, a conservative Christian group based in Mississippi that is one of the country's most active gay marriage opponents, said the advocates should not bother wasting their energy in this state.
"I do not see Mississippi changing its collective mind in the foreseeable future," Fischer said, adding that a resounding majority — 86 percent — of voters in 2004 voted to ban same-sex marriage. "The understanding of the institution of natural marriage is deeply embedded here. These people should accept the Democratic process and accept the will of the people."
An irony gone unnoticed
On Wednesday afternoon, a young man and woman sidled up to the clerk's office in Gulfport. They seemed giddy in their love, their hands straying repeatedly to each other. They wanted a marriage license. Minutes later, the clerk congratulated them, handing over the document. She informed them that they could get married that day, in the Justice Court right behind the Circuit Clerk's office.
Gone is the requisite three-day waiting period, along with the premarital blood test for syphilis. The Legislature did away with all that last year, the clerk said, to "make it a lot easier for people to get married now." She did not see the irony in her statement. Moments earlier she had denied a license to a lesbian couple, Candy Dalton and Sabrina Tiedt, as their four children — ages 9, 10, 14, and 20 — looked on.
"I want my kids to know to stand up for something that you know is right regardless of what the law says," said Dalton, a 43-year-old Walmart optician. They plan on marrying anyway in February — in California.
Their presence in the courthouse drew stares and questions. Side conservations ensued, among court security, clerk office staff, people inquiring about pending trials.
While some scoffed at the spectacle, one security guard told another, "You love who you love."
"Let them get married," she said. "They do it in other states.''
Tracy Jan can be reached at email@example.com.


text:
Galway is Ireland's fifth largest city, and is renowned for its vibrant colourful buildings, live music, bohemian culture and street performances. A popular place to take a city break, Galway has plenty of arts and culture on offer and is considered by many to be the "most Irish" Irish city. A popular getaway for young couples, students and those with a solid interest in arts and culture, Galway boasts a truly bohemian spirit. It's easy to soak up the atmosphere here and be allured by the charms of the city simply by taking a stroll through one of its many streets. There's also a rich history here for those who like to do plenty of sightseeing, with the remains of medieval towns that lay between the streets lined with bohemian shops and bespoke boutiques. The stunning countryside that surrounds the city acts as a dramatic backdrop where you'll see rugged landscapes and lush greenery climbing the hillside giving you a true taste of rural Ireland. The weather is generally pretty changeable here and temperatures only ever tend to hit the early 20s even during summer. Rainfall is evenly distributed throughout the year and thunder storms tend to be common during the later summer months.
Ideal car
Family car
Galway is less busy than Dublin, but is still highly pedestrianised, and rush hour can be very busy on the roads. A hatchback is fine if you're looking to stay in the city, but the beautiful Irish countryside is easy to get to, so a more flexible family car is recommended.
Driving in Galway
Road Driving Side
Urban Speed Limit
Rural Speed Limit
Motorway Speed Limit
Important things to note
Due to the population of Galway largely being made up of students, the city is considered a party town and can be quite lively at night. Be aware of large groups of rowdy people who might have over-indulged after a night of drinking.
There are plenty of parking facilities throughout Galway both multi-storey and pay-and-display car parks. On-street metered parking is also available.
Galway's roads are prone to congestion and high volumes of traffic during rush hour, so it's best to avoid driving through the city centre during peak times.
Highlights & Hotspots
James Joyce's former house that he shared with his wife and muse, Noral Barnacle, has been transformed into a museum. Explore this tiny home and learn the history of the man behind the classic Ulysses.
On a Tuesday night, there's no place better to go in Galway than Monroe's Tavern, located in Galway's West End where you'll see a range of traditional Irish dances. Usually, audience members like to join in too.
Take a trip to the Bold Art Gallery, where you'll discover the extensive collection of works that range from the irreverent to the phenomenally beautiful.
For those wanting a true taste of the city's history, a trip to the Spanish Arch and Medieval Walls is the perfect way to discover it for yourself. Considered an extension to the medieval walls, the Spanish arch once acted as passageway for ships to enter the city.
If you're visiting Galway during the final week of September, be sure to join in with festivities at the Galway International Oyster Festival where you'll be able to sample these exquisite delights from the ocean.
Airport Information
Galway Airport is located approximately 4 miles from Galway city centre. Galway Airport has not serviced any flights since 31 October 2011.
Top Car Hire Locations in ireland
Car Hire Dublin
Car Hire Knock Airport
Car Hire Cork Airport
car Hire Shannon Airport
Car Hire Kerry Airport
Car Hire Derry Airport

subset: commoncrawl


text:
1915 witnessed a number of major battles in World War One, not least at Gallipoli, Ypres and Loos. 1915 was also the year when poison gas (chlorine) was used for the first time.
January 8th: Battle of Soissons started.
January 14th: Battle of Soissons ended after the Germans launched a successful counter-attack against the French.
January 15th: The War Council authorised a naval attack on the Dardanelles.
January 19th: The first Zeppelin raid on Great Britain took place at Great Yarmouth.
January 24th: Battle of Dogger Bank between Royal Navy and the German Navy.
January 31st: The first recognised use of poison gas took place at Bolimov on the Vistula Front.
February 3rd: Unsuccessful attacks on the Suez Canal by the Turks.
February 4th: Germany declared the waters around Great Britain to be a 'war zone'.
February 19th: British troops bombarded Turkish forts in the Dardanelles. Small number of Marines landed.
February 24th: A decision was taken that if the Navy could not defeat the defenders at the Dardanelles, then the task would be finished by the Army.
March 10th: The British Army launched an offensive at Neuve Chapelle.
March 13th: Mediterranean Expeditionary Force sailed from Egypt. Battle of Neuve Chapelle was ended.
March 18th: An Anglo-French force that involved 16 battleships attacked the Dardanelles but suffered heavy losses.
March 22nd: Army and Navy commanders agreed on a joint offensive. Two Zeppelins attacked Paris.
April 11th: British forces led by Sir John Nixon repel a Turkish attack on Basra.
April 22nd: First use of chlorine gas at the start of the Second Battle of Ypres.
April 25th: Allied troops landed at five beaches at Gallipoli and gained a small beachhead at Anzac Cove.
April 26th: A secret treaty between the Triple Entente and Italy brought Italy into the war on the side of the Allies.
May 1st: First American merchant ship sunk by Germans, the 'Gulflight', a tanker, off the Scilly Islands.
May 3rd: Italy denounced the Triple Alliance.
May 7th: The 'Lusitania' was sunk by a German U-boat; 1,201 lives were lost including 128 Americans.
May 9th: France launched a Spring Offensive in Artois and advanced towards Vimy Ridge.
May 19th: The Turks launched a major attack to force the Allies out of Gallipoli. They suffered heavy casualties.
May 23rd: Italy declared war on Austria-Hungary.
May 24th: A ceasefire was ordered for Anzac Cove to allow for the dead to be buried. The Austrian Navy bombarded Italian coastal towns and sunk the Italian destroyer 'Turbine'.
May 25th: 'HMS Triumph' sunk by U-21 off the Dardanelles. Second Battle of Ypres ended.
May 26th: Italy announced that they would blockade Austria.
May 27th: 'HMS Majestic' sunk by U-21 off the Dardanelles.
May 30th: The Italians bombed the Austrians fleet base at Pula.
May 31st: The first Zeppelin raid on London took place killing 28 and wounding 60.
June 18th: The French Spring Offensive in Artois was ended.
June 20th: The Germans launched an offensive in the Meuse-Argonne area.
June 23rd: First Battle of Isonzo.
July 1st: Central War Industries Committee introduced to Germany and Austria-Hungary to co-ordinate war production.
July 7th: First Battle of Isonzo ended with minor Italian victories.
July 12th: German coal industry placed under state control.
July 13th: The German offensive in Meuse-Argonne came to an end.
July 18th: Second Battle of Isonzo started.
August 1st: The start of the 'Fokker Scourge' with the Fokker monoplane dominant over the Western Front.
August 3rd: Second Battle of Isonzo ended with a total of 90,000 casualties but with minimal territorial gains for the Italians.
August 5th: Germany captured Warsaw from the Russians
August 6th: Attempted breakout from Anzac Cove to capture nearby heights.
August 10th: The Turks recapture lost land and forced the Allies back to Anzac Cove.
August 20th: Italy started a sustained bombing campaign against Austrian military targets.
August 21st: The 29th Division was ordered to attack Hill 60 and Scimitar Hill. The attack failed with heavy casualties.
September 1st: Germany pledged that neutral ships would not be targeted in the sea war.
September 5th: Nicholas II of Russia took full control of the Russian Army.
September 25th: The British Army used poison gas for the first time at the Battle of Loos.
September 26th: Start of Battle of Kut al-Amara.
September 28th: End of Battle of Kut al-Amara; British forces defeated the Turks.
October 11th: Bulgarian troops attacked Serbia.
October 14th: The Battle of Loos came to an end.
October 18th: Third Battle of Isonzo started.
November 4th: Third Battle of Isonzo ended with no obvious gains for either side.
November 10th: Lord Kitchener visited the Gallipoli front and decided to withdraw ANZAC forces there. Fourth Battle of Isonzo started.
November 25th: The Serbian Army was ordered to retreat through Albania with the German Army in pursuit.
November 27th: Very poor weather led to 15,000 troops being evacuated from Anzac Cove for frostbite, trench foot and exposure.
December 3rd: Fourth Battle of Isonzo ended with minimal territorial gains for Italy.
December 19th: The Allies started the evacuation of Gallipoli. Douglas Haig replaced Sir John French as commander of the BEF.
1914 1916 1917 1918
April 2009


text:
What is your favorite Thanksgiving main dish?
Also, favorite dessert?
For me it's Turkey breast and Pumpkin Roll.
What is your favorite Thanksgiving main dish?
Also, favorite dessert?
For me it's Turkey breast and Pumpkin Roll.
1. Turkey
2. Pumpkin anything
3. Deviled Eggs
4. Mashed Taters with mushroom gravy
5. sweet potatoes casserole.
6. stuffing
Just about anything i can eat i like......
Now wait a minute, Susie. Just because every child can't get his wish that doesn't mean there isn't a Santa Claus.
My favorite is deviled eggs,sweet potatoes,and cranberry sauce but,i love everything really as i love holiday foods and i also bake so i'm always into something,it surprises people i only weigh 118 and i love to eat those holiday dinners and goodies.
Thanks for the replies.
I also love the smell of Thanksgiving foods cooking. It's a wonderful family time together and I feel the Thanksgiving holiday is a very important day and not for the food, it's a time of Thanksgiving and a time for family.
I love all of it. we have turkey (I like both, but I am a dark meat fan), stuffing, (I like to add sausage, celery, dried cherries) real mashed potatoes, gravy, jellied cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes (sometimes add just salt and butter, sometimes a little brown sugar, too) broccoli, brussel sprouts, pumpkin pie, pecan pie, sometimes apple pie, too. I might have forgotten something. The best part is the leftovers; getting to eat this meal for at least a few more dinners, YUM!!! oh, and I forgot, we also have green bean casserole. It's my favorite meal of the year.
My all time favorite is pumpkin pie. I also love turkey breast, cranberry/orange relish and spiced fruit.
Stuffing is definetly my favorite food on Thanksgiving and for after it's Milk Dud Dessert, Yummy!!
1. Stuffing
2 Sweet Potato Cassarole
3. Pearl Onions
1.Pumpkin Pie
Merry Christmas Charlie Brown! May all your days feel as christmas!!!
turkey, stuffing, gingerbread, pumpkin pie
Wishing you many hot cocoa mornings and firesky nights throughout the new year!
(((((((((((((HUGS)))))))))))) Everybody Needs a Hug
It changes your metabolism ((((((((((HUGS))))))))))!!!
Stuffing, stuffing, stuffing!
Mashed Potatoes and Gravy.
Farm Journal's Frosted Cranberry Salad(apples, crushed pineapple, walnuts and whole berry cranberry sauce plus Jell-o, Miracle Whip, cream cheese and whipped cream).
Homemade Pumpkin Pie with Reddi Whip!
Last edited by Merry Christmas Darling; 10-19-2009 at 02:10 AM.
"Hail him who saves you by his grace,
and crown him Lord of all."


text:
Republican Party on Principles & ValuesParty Platform | |
The Democratic side is also overwhelmingly Christian, at 80 percent. But of the 242 Democrats in both chambers, there are also 28 Jews, three Buddhists, three Hindus, two Muslims, one Unitarian Universalist and one representative--Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.)--who is religiously unaffiliated.
And yet Republicans have proven themselves remarkably tone-deaf when it comes to courting Hispanic voters--to the extent that they court them at all. Attracting Hispanic votes does not require abandoning conservative principles--quite the contrary. Rather, it means seeing Hispanic voters as individuals, most of whom fervently cherish our nation's ideals.
To win Hispanic votes--and those of immigrants generally--Republicans should play to their strengths while avoiding alienating rhetoric that makes them appear anti-immigrant.
Excessive taxation and regulation impede economic development. Lowering taxes promotes substantial economic growth and reducing regulation encourages business formation and job creation. Knowing that, a Republican President and Congress will jumpstart an economic renewal that creates opportunity, rewards work and saving, and unleashes the productive genius of the American people. Because the GOP is the Great Opportunity Party, this is our pledge to workers without jobs, families without savings, and neighborhoods without hope: together we can get our country back on track, expanding its bounty, renewing its faith, and fulfilling its promise of a better life.
Such tension would not be possible in any other affluent democracy, because in those democracies nothing remotely resembling social conservatism exists. Its absence is the main reason the politics of Western Europe and Japan have not become polarized, and the continued presence and strength of social conservatism is the central reason politics is polarized here. Understanding why this is so, and why it is likely to continue well into the future, goes a long way toward explaining why American politics has such a different feel from the politics of other affluent democracies, as well as where our very different politics may lead.
Liberal-backed judicial curbs on public prayer and other symbols and expressions of faith were making believers more and more uneasy. The year 1988 television evangelist Pat Robertson's ability to mobilize previously uninvolved Christian activists began a new era in GOP presidential politics.
Nowhere in the Constitution is the term "separation of church and state " used. It was a deliberate omission by the authors and signers of the Constitution. It is not an agreed term in the contract between we the people and the federal government. It is outside of the four corners of the Constitution.
In meetings with veterans I argued that almost no one desecrates the flag. To the contrary, September 11 had inspired millions of Americans to start flying the flag for the 1st time in their lives. Republicans were whipping up veterans over a nonissue for short-term political gain in November.
I had not seen an American protester burn an American flag in 30 years. It was just plain wrong and irresponsible to use our own partisan political agenda to poison 50 statehouses with the emotional nonissues. We would be sabotaging the real work our state lawmakers had to accomplish.
The House passed the amendment and Pres. Bush was delighted to announce that he would sign the legislation if the Senate followed suit [but it failed].
The one thing they all have in common: they always know that no matter how weak the Republican candidate is on any of their particular issues, the Democrat can only be worse. Bubba knows that a modern Florida Democrat, even a moderate Democrat, will owe his election to blacks and liberals. The evangelicals know that a Democrat will be unlikely to put biblical creationism back in the public schools.
These 3 groups in total account for 40% to 45% of the electorate. The difference was, by the late 1980s, all 3 were voting, for the first time, in lockstep with the Republicans.
I am convinced that whenever we exaggerate or demonize, oversimplify or overstate our case, we lose. For it is the predictability of our current political debate, that keeps us from finding new ways to meet the challenges we face. It is what keeps us locked in �either/or� thinking: the notion that we can only have big government or no government; the assumption that we must either tolerate 46 million uninsured or embrace �socialized medicine.�
It is such partisanship that have turned Americans off. What is needed is a broad majority who are re-engaged and who see their own self-interest as inextricably linked to the interest of others.
Few nations in history have been granted such a singular opportunity to shape the future. Even after World War II the United States had to reckon with a divided world and terrible dangers. Now America can help mold international ideals and institutions for decades to come. Handed the torch by generations that won great battles, our generation of Americans with its allies and friends can build a different and better world, promoting U.S. interests and principles, avoiding the economic convulsions and perilous conflicts that so scarred the century just past. Through a distinctly American internationalism, a new Republican president will build public support for a new strategy that can lead the United States of America toward a more peaceful and prosperous world for us, our children, and future generations.


text:
Four names keep coming up in light of Lady Drew's latest business decision: Drew himself, Scott Boras, Eric Gagne and Ned Colletti.
- DREW: " 'At some point, you make your commitments and you stick to them,' he told the Orange County Register" (L.A. Times). Comments like that have been dredged up by Dodger supporters to demonstrate Drew's supposed hypocrisy. But I have no doubt that Drew meant such words when he said them.
"Let's have lunch—I'll call you!" is heard a lot here in L.A. But nine times out of ten, said lunch is not had. "Let's do lunch" is code for "Nice seeing you" just as "You make your commitments and you stick to them" is code for "I enjoy playing here." Period.
- BORAS: Evil? Maybe. Smart? Yes. You don't convince someone to abandon $33 million if you're not certain you can get them more.
- GAGNE: "[Boras] said Drew simply made a business decision to exercise a contractual right, much as the Dodgers made their decision not to exercise their $12-million option on injured closer Eric Gagne" (L.A. Times). True, but the Dodgers ended up paying Gagne $19 million for 9 saves; the player was overpaid and the organization walked away from that. The Dodgers paid Drew $22 million for 218 games; again the player was overpaid but this time the player walks away from that? Not a parallel comparison.
- NEDDY: Jon Weisman at Dodger Thoughts makes this canny observation: "...if Paul DePodesta had been caught off guard by Drew's departure in the exact, exact same fashion as Ned Colletti was, however innocently, however insignificantly, with that month going by without a phone call, we would be hearing all about how rotten a communicator DePodesta was....But I expect Colletti will be let off the hook - which is fine, just different."
Why? I think Ned will be "let off the hook" because in one set of quotes he showed more emotion—embarrassment, frustration, a little vindictiveness—than did DePodesta in his entire Dodger tenure. What Dodger fan can't identify with those feelings when something like this happens? (Besides Bill Plaschke, that is.)


text:
The facility was constructed 1995. Originally the Fralin Biotechnology Center, the facility was established to promote research, education, and outreach related to the life sciences. The Fralin Biotechnology Center and the Institute for Biomedical and Public Health Sciences were administratively merged in 2008 to form the Fralin Life Science Institute.
Fralin Life Science Institute
360 West Campus DriveThe Fralin Life Science Institute is an interdisciplinary research center that bring scientists from different disciplines together to solve some of biology's more complex challenges.
Horace Grover Fralin
The Fralin Life Science Institute bears the name of Horace Grover Fralin, Class of 1948, who co-founded Fralin and Waldron, a progressive real estate development company in Roanoke, Va. He helped revitalize downtown Roanoke and was a member of the Virginia Tech Board of Visitors, a founding member of the Virginia Tech Corporate Research Center, president of the Virginia Tech Foundation, and the 1992 recipient of Tech's William H. Ruffner Medal.
Building History
- Originally Built:
- 1995
- Map Grid:
- Abbreviation / Number:
- Coordinates:
- 37.22411, -80.42349


text:
(New York) – Egyptian police used water cannons, teargas, and batons on November 26, 2013, to disperse several hundred activists peacefully protesting military trials of civilians, Human Rights Watch said today. The police assault came two days after Interim President Adly Mansour issued a new law restricting public assembly.
A group of about 200 activists had gathered in front of the Shura Council, where a committee is discussing draft provisions for a new constitution. The crowd chanted slogans to protest proposed provisions for military trials of civilians. Human Rights Watch staff at the scene observed that the protest was entirely peaceful. Dozens of police arrived and warned the crowd to disperse. Minutes later, police fired water cannons and then charged the crowd, beating and detaining protester after protester, according to witnesses, lawyers, and video footage reviewed by Human Rights Watch
"Tuesday's protest against military trials provided an opportunity to see how Egyptian authorities would use the new assembly law," said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch. "What we saw was police treating the new assembly law as a carte blanche to attack protesters, all too familiar to Egyptians after years of police impunity."
The human rights group No Military Trials for Civilians called for the demonstration in front of the Shura Council, where the Committee of 50, the group appointed by Interim President Mansour to propose constitutional amendments, had convened to discuss the draft document. On November 24, two days before the protest, Mansour issued Law 107 of 2013 on the Right to Public Meetings, Processions, and Peaceful Demonstrations. The group had not notified the Interior Ministry three days ahead of the demonstration, as the new law requires.
The new law allows the police to forcibly disperse a demonstration if "any criminal act emanates from the participants, or if the assembly diverges from peaceful expression," and says the chief police officer on the ground will make the decision.
Abdel Fattah Othman, assistant interior minister for media affairs, said that the police dispersed the demonstration after protesters blocked roads in violation of the law, the government-owned al-Ahram newspaper reported. In a statement on its official Facebook page, the Interior Ministry blamed protesters, saying they had not complied with the new requirement for advance notification or obtained the necessary security clearance. The statement further claims that protesters threw rocks and bricks at police officers.
But Human Rights Watch staff observing the demonstration saw no sign of protester violence, and none of the witnesses Human Rights Watch interviewed or extensive video footage Human Rights Watch reviewed indicated that protesters used force.
Police arrested at least 72 demonstrators, according to the Egyptian Center for Economic and Social Rights (ECESR), a rights group whose lawyers went to police stations to represent detainees. The Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression, which also had lawyers on the scene, said they documented 89 arrests. Lawyers, family members, and released detainees outside the First New Cairo police station told Human Rights Watch that at least 35 protesters were held there and 12 in the nearby Third New Cairo police station.
Detainees included well-known activists – Mona Seif, Nazly Hussein, and Salma Said; human rights lawyers – Ahmed Heshmat, Mohamed Abdelaziz, and Osama al-Mahdy; and journalists – Ahmad Ragab of al-Masry al-Youm, and Rasha Azab of al-Fagr.
By the end of the evening, police had released all detained women, journalists, and lawyers, according to ECESR, including 14 female protesters dropped off in the late evening on the side of a desert highway over 30 kilometers south of the protest site. Human Rights Watch staff visited the scene and four of the women confirmed that authorities had dropped them there and that they were waiting for friends and family to pick them up.
Aida al-Kashef, one of the women, told Human Rights Watch that a man wearing a suit and flanked by other men in civilian clothing approached her and other female detainees on the stairs of the First New Cairo police station and told them to leave with him.
When they refused, the man nodded and the other men "held us one-by-one, dragged us down the stairs, beat us, threw us inside the police truck… [and took us] until we were dumped in the desert." Three other detained protesters Human Rights Watch interviewed corroborated this account.
Nazly Hussein tweeted immediately after her arrest that police sexually harassed her and other female protesters while detaining them. She told Human Rights Watch after her release that police officers "grabbed me, groped me, and tried to pull off my clothes."
Twenty-four protesters remained in detention at the First New Cairo police station as of the afternoon of November 27. One of their lawyers told Human Rights Watch that they faced charges both under the new assembly law – including participating in a protest at which weapons were present, blocking traffic, and organizing a protest without permission, and under other sections of the penal code – including thuggery, forced theft, illegal public gathering, and attacking public employees. Reuters reported that prosecutors on November 27 had charged Ahmed Maher, a leader of the April 6 youth movement, and Alaa Abd al-Fattah, an activist, with organizing the demonstration in violation of the new assembly law.
A court in Alexandria on November 27 also sentenced 21 young women and girls to prison or detention for taking part in a peaceful demonstration on October 31, their lawyer told Human Rights Watch. The 14 who were between the ages of 18 and 22 were each sentenced to 11 years and 1 month in prison. Seven girls aged 15 - 18 were sentenced to a juvenile detention facility until they turn 18, at which point their cases will be re-evaluated.
Prosecutors hastily brought the case to trial, charging the women under the 1923 Public Assembly law with illegal public gathering, thuggery, use of weapons, and sabotage. Six men received 15-year sentences in absentia for instigating the protests.
A Cairo court on November 13 handed down 17-year sentences and 65,000 LE (US$9440) fines to 12 students from al-Azhar University for charges stemming from involvement in protests and clashes on the campus.
Police used teargas later in the evening of November 26 to disperse protesters who gathered around Qasr al-Nil Bridge and on Talaat Harb Street to chant against the military and the police. Sherief Gaber, a 29-year-old activist who was in Talaat Harb Square, told Human Rights Watch that police vans fired teargas, chased protesters down side streets, and occupied the square, arresting protesters before retreating. "The cycle repeated itself several times over the course of the evening," Gaber said.
Earlier on November 26, police used similar methods to disperse a gathering in memory of Gaber Salah, an activist also known as Gika who was killed in a 2012 protest in Tahrir Square.
Since the army's ouster of former President Mohamed Morsy on July 3, police have frequently used force to disperse demonstrations organized by supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood, sometimes using excessive lethal force.
"The violent dispersal and arrests on November 26 serve as a stark reminder of the danger of giving security forces a blank check to regulate public assembly," Stork said. "The government should immediately release those detained solely for exercising their right to demonstrate and rescind the new protest law."


text:
Just another Perl shrine | |
PerlMonks |
DateTime: 160 Journalism: 0by mojotoad (Monsignor) |
on Apr 28, 2004 at 23:30 UTC ( [id://348977] : CUFP . print w/replies, xml ) | Need Help?? |
I thought I'd share with you a story of DateTime in the trenches. Here in Houston, Texas, in the April 15th issue of our local alternative newspaper the Houston Press they discuss the lyrics of the song "It's Five O'Clock Somewhere" by Jimmy Buffett and Alan Jackson.
In their discussion, they make the following statement: Pardon us for being nitpicky, but we have some issues with Jimmy Buffett and Alan Jackson's song, "It's Five O'Clock Somewhere." Sure, we get the gist, but the whole concept really belies a complete ignorance of how time zones work. Just in case you haven't heard the song, here's the chorus in question: "Pour me something tall and strong / Make it a hurricane, before I go insane / It's only half past twelve, but I don't care / It's five o'clock somewhere." Apparently Mr. Buffett and Mr. Jackson haven't wandered very far from Margaritaville, 'cause it doesn't take a genius to know that it can't be 5 p.m. anywhere when it's 12:30 p.m. somewhere else. I knew this couldn't be right since I was aware of at least a couple of time zones with half-hour offsets, plus even one with a 45 minute offset (Nepal). So I whipped up a quick script using DateTime and DateTime::TimeZone, which is based on the Olson Timezone Database, to find out how many time zones for which these requirements might apply. I made a rudimentary attempt at including DST effects by running all calculations twice -- once for Jan 1 and once for Aug 1. The summary: There are 12 zones, potentially, with half-hour offsets. There are two with 45 minute offsets. There are 160 possible zones for being 5pm when it is 12:30pm somewhere else, out of 367 total. I've included the script and the letter I sent to the Houston Press. I've no idea if they'll print any of the letter since I didn't get around to checking the facts until recently, but they might.
Cheers! Update: They published my letter, with minor modifications, in the May 13th, 2004 issue. Time on My Hands
Back to
Cool Uses for Perl


text:
Mental Health filtered by Like Minds Like Mine
Our goal at Te Whatu Ora is for New Zealanders to experience positive mental health and wellbeing. We aim to reduce the impact of depression and anxiety on the lives of New Zealanders, and create a nation that values and includes people with experience of mental illness, so that all New Zealanders can participate in society and in the everyday life of their communities and whānau. This work encompasses two programmes of activity:
National Depression Initiative – This initiative focuses on reducing the impacts of depression and anxiety on adults and young people through early recognition and appropriate treatment. Find out more at depression.org.nz and thelowdown.co.nz. You can find resources that promote these two websites on this page.
Like Minds, Like Mine – This is a national programme to increase social inclusion and reduce stigma and discrimination for people with experience of mental illness. The programme is guided by the Like Minds, Like Mine National Plan 2014-2019.
For more information about what we do, please see: hpa.org.nz/programme/mental-health


text:
• obtrude •
Pronunciation: ahb-trud • Hear it!
Part of Speech: Verb
Meaning: 1. To thrust outward, to push forward. 2. To impose yourself or your opinions forcibly on others without their consent.
Notes: Today's Good Word belongs to an old and distinguished family of Latin borrowings that include intrude, extrude, and protrude. Like them, it comes with a noun obtrusion and an adjective, obtrusive. Those who obtrude are, of course, obtruders. An obtrusion is usually a single act of obtruding. An obtrusive person, though, is characterized by his or her obtrusiveness.
In Play: Intrusions are interruptions that may be happy, obnoxious, or necessary, but an obtrusion can only be obnoxious: "Is there somewhere we can talk where Jess Buggov can't obtrude with his incessant jabber about his grandchildren?" Someone may intrude on a conversation with an important message, but obtrusions are unimportant and annoying: "Taylor Maide was furious when his caddy obtruded on his concentration at the eighth hole just to tell him that the lightning was now hitting the golf course."
Word History: Today's Good Word traces its roots back to Latin obtrudere "to push against", made up of ob- "against" + trudere "to thrust". The root of trudere comes from the same Proto-Indo-European root that gave English its words threat and thrust. This word was also preserved in the Slavic languages where we find it in the popular word under Soviet power, trud "labor, hard work hard". Since the Soviets saw themselves as the defenders of the worldwide labor movement, trud was often repeated in publications, including the magazine Trud. In Serbo-Croatian this root implies a different sense of labor, for trudna means "pregnant" in that language. (I am sure we would all like to assure the mysterious Klimt of the Alpha Agora that his suggestion of today's Good Word was not the least obtrusive.)
P.S. - Register for the Daily Good Word E-Mail! - You can get our daily Good Word sent directly to you via e-mail in either HTML or Text format. Go to our Registration Page to sign up today!


text:
Multi-vehicle pileup closes I-77 at Va-NC border
Published 12:00 am Sunday, March 31, 2013
GALAX, Va. (AP) — Galax police say there are several fatalities due to a multi-vehicle pileup that has shut down Interstate 77 at the Virginia-North Carolina border.
Police say both northbound and southbound lanes are closed.
Details weren't immediately available.
The Virginia Department of Transportation's 511 website says traffic is backed up about 8 miles.
Motorists are being advised to seek alternate routes. A detour has been set up at exits 24, 14 and 8. The Department of Transportation says tractor-trailers aren't allowed on the detour.


text:
All About Dungog Shire
Dungog Shire is in the Hunter Region of NSW and is renowned for its forests, mountains and picturesque river villages. Council is committed to the preservation and protection of the Shire's natural environment and cultural heritage and offers a high quality rural lifestyle within 2.5 hours easy drive of Sydney.
The Shire covers an area of 2248 sq kilometres. It is bordered in the north by the Barrington Tops plateau, which is part of the Great Dividing Range. The Shire consists predominantly of very rugged to hilly country which becomes less rugged from north to south.
The Shire has two principal rivers, the Williams in the east and the Paterson (and its major tributary the Allyn) in the west. Both are tributaries of the Hunter River and contribute over 80% of the drinking water supply to the Lower Hunter and 40% of the flow of the Hunter.
The Shire's economy has traditionally been based on agriculture and timber, with the alluvial river flats suitable for intensive agricultural production. The balance of the rural land has been traditionally used for grazing.
Tourism is also a focus of Dungog Shire's economy with the National Parks, State Forests, Chichester Dam and the river systems as well as the historic and scenic character of the area providing the major focus for attracting visitors.


text:
One reason for the difference in results might be the context of their construction. Temples in Greece were frequently built upon sites that had been sacred for generations, reaching back into the Bronze Age at places like Thermon, where the later classical temples were built over the remains of Mycenaean era megaron. [21] There was the matter of historical tradition which meant that temples built in the archaic and classical periods might be built not only according to the cosmology of the time of construction, but also within the restraints of prior religious thought. The temples in Sicily were built in cities that, at the time of building, saw themselves as immigrants in a distant land. [22] Therefore there was no historical precedent to shape the construction of the temples. They were much more likely to be purely the products of seventh-, sixth- and fifth-century cosmology. The lack of prior foundations gave the Sicilian Greeks more freedom to express current thought in religious practice through their temples.Related: Soil and Greek temples
The self-identification of Sicilian Greeks as Greeks living overseas may have also made adherence to a Greek ideal more of an imperative to reassure both themselves and visitors from the homeland that their location made them no less Greek. It is interesting to note that Greek sanctuaries in Greece could be out in the hinterland tying territory to the city, while Sicilian temples were all built in urban or suburban sites. An 'astronomical fingerprint' may, along with other elements such as the architectural form and religious practice, have been part of a drive to prove the Hellenic character of a settlement. Hence, perhaps, the stronger results in Sicily than Greece. This could be testable by comparison with temple alignments in other locations like the Black Sea colonies or Hellenistic Asia. A lack of a similar adherence to astronomical orientation for temples in these regions would be a surprising result given the emphatic nature of the results in Sicily and Greece.
PLoS ONE doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0007903
The Astronomical Orientation of Ancient Greek Temples
Alun M. Salt
Despite its appearing to be a simple question to answer, there has been no consensus as to whether or not the alignments of ancient Greek temples reflect astronomical intentions. Here I present the results of a survey of archaic and classical Greek temples in Sicily and compare them with temples in Greece. Using a binomial test I show strong evidence that there is a preference for solar orientations. I then speculate that differences in alignment patterns between Sicily and Greece reflect differing pressures in the expression of ethnic identity.


text:
3 1/4 cups bread flour, plus additional for rolling
1 cup water
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1 tablespoons butter, softened, plus additional for greasing
2 teaspoons active dry yeast
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
8 cups water
2 tablespoons baking soda
1 egg
1 tablespoon water
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1/3 cup firmly packed brown sugar
2 tablespoons pure maple syrup
1 teaspoon flaky sea salt
In the bowl of a stand mixer with dough hook attached, combine flour, 1 cup water, 1 tablespoon brown sugar, 1 tablespoon butter, yeast and 1 1/2 teaspoons salt, and mix until elastic, about 5 minutes on medium speed.
Butter a large mixing bowl; place dough inside and cover with plastic wrap. Allow to rise in a warm place for 1 hour, or until doubled in bulk. I set my bowl in the oven at 170 degrees F, but that may have been too warm. It got the job done though!
Preheat oven to 450 degrees F (remove dough, duh). Butter two large baking sheet pans; line with parchment paper, then butter parchment.
Bring 8 cups of water and baking soda to a boil in a large pot.
Divide dough into 8 equal pieces, and roll into pretzel shape on a floured surface.
Reduce water to a simmer; gently lower two pretzels into water, cook 1 minute, then remove onto baking sheet using a slotted spoon or spatula. Repeat process with remaining pretzels.
Whisk together egg and 1 tablespoon water, in a small bowl, until combined; brush evenly over tops of pretzels.
Bake at 450 degrees for 10 minutes.
Meanwhile, make the glaze. Melt 2 tablespoons butter in a small saucepan over medium heat. Whisk in maple syrup and brown sugar, and bring mixture to a boil, whisking frequently; boil 1 minute, then remove from heat.
After 10 minutes, remove pretzels from oven and brush glaze over the tops (save leftover glaze for dipping!). Evenly sprinkle pretzels with sea salt. Return pans to oven and bake for an additional 5-7 minutes, or until golden brown; transfer to wire racks.
Makes 8 large pretzels


text:
My Dear Mary Ashley,
The other day you skipped into the dining room, pausing from your play to watch me work for a moment. "What are you doing, Mommy?" you asked.
Hunched over my sewing machine, I was intent on finishing a seam. "I'm making a dress for you," I replied, my eyes leaving the fabric briefly to meet yours.
"OK, Mommy," you replied brightly. Then as quickly as you had entered the room, you were gone. I could hear your lilting giggles fade as you skipped down the hall to find your baby dolls.
Yes, my sweet daughter, I was making you a dress. That is the short answer. But I am writing you this letter so that one day when you are grown, you can read this and understand what this project has meant to me.
And it's all because of what you mean to me.
Tonight I finished making my first heirloom dress, a gift for you, my dear. A friend has been teaching me the art of heirloom sewing, and oh what a learning process this has been! We have invested countless many hours into this project. We spent our first morning together nearly a month ago to plan and shop for the dress. As Miss Cathy sketched ideas -- calculating how many yards of fabric, lace and ribbon we would need to breathe life into our vision -- my mind wandered. I could already picture you running down a garden path, giggling and twirling in the dress I would make just for you.
At the fabric store, Miss Cathy and I chose our fabric first, a soft pink satin batiste. Since your infancy, I have loved dressing you in pink, and most days it is your favorite color. So this selection was easy.
Choosing laces was much more difficult. But thumbing through page after page of delicate trim, I was drawn to selections that remind me of you. A length of Swiss insertion was the first piece that caught my eye. Ribbons undulating across the fabric and drawn up in little bows reminded me of the ribbons I have slipped into your hair nearly every day of your life. One of the delights of motherhood for me is fixing your hair. I love every bouncy golden curl on your sweet little head, my daughter, and I love watching it shimmer in the light as I comb it each morning. Whether I leave your hair down or sweep your curls into a ponytail, you know that we are never done until I have slipped a bow into your hair. In fact, my little southern belle, you have worn hair bows so often that when you were 1 and I couldn't find a bow to match your outfit, your 3-year-old brother would not let us leave the house without one. "She has to have a bow," Christian insisted sternly. "She's Mary Ashley!"
With Swiss insertion as our inspiration, Miss Cathy and I looked for more laces to add to the lace band. Among them, a pretty white lace with bouquets of roses seemed perfect for you. So many times you have come running into the house, a bouquet of fresh-picked flowers clutched in your tiny little hand. "I picked these for you, Mommy!" you say with a smile. I treasure each flower you have given me, as well as your dreams to one day have a garden of your own. Along with our laces, soft satin ribbons would add the final details to the dress.
With all the materials in hand, it was time to get started. Each day I learned new techniques of heirloom sewing. I never knew how much work went into the creation of an heirloom garment, but every stitch is thoughtfully placed. Cutting and pulling fabric, sewing laces together, and rolling and whipping fabric edges can be tedious work. When progress was slow, I focused on the intrinsic beauty of the materials.
When you entered the room the other day, I was in the midst of sewing the lace band for your skirt. I enjoyed running my fingers over the lace -- each piece so lovely and intricate. I was amazed watching the lace band take shape one stitch at a time, but then you spoke to me and my attention turned to you. And the sight of you nearly took my breath away.
You see, each time I see you, my beautiful daughter, my heart whispers a prayer of thankfulness. I never could have imagined what a blessing you would be to me, and I praise our heavenly Father that He has entrusted you to me.
So when you asked me what I was doing, I told you I was making you a dress. And I was. But I was also doing so much more. With each careful stitch, I was saying I love you. I treasure you. And I am so grateful for the privilege of holding your hand as you grow up right before my eyes.
With this dress I am trying to preserve this moment in time. Oh, how I wish I could freeze time and keep you my little girl forever! But each day carries you forward, and it seems I can already hear your lilting giggles fading as you skip down the hall to the future that God has planned for you. But with this dress, I hope to give you a tangible reminder that your dreams can never take you so far as to move beyond your mother's love.
Tomorrow morning when you wake up and see my finished project, I hope you will love it. At 5, I hope you will dance and twirl when you try on your new dress. As a little girl, when you wear it, you may realize that your mommy loves you. But only when you are all grown up and you slip this dress over the head of your own 5-year-old daughter, will you realize how much. And on that day, as she lifts her golden curls from the nape of her neck so you can fasten the beauty pins, when she turns her sparkling blue eyes toward you and flashes you a smile, and you feel your heart lurch with all the hopes, dreams and prayers that it can hold, I hope you will think of me.
And then, my daughter, you will know what I was doing that day so many years ago. I was saying I love you. I was wrapping you in a mother's love. All the while thanking our Father and asking his blessings for you. Yes, my dear Mary Ashley, I was doing all this and more.
I was making you a dress.
(Find this post linked here on Tip Junkie.)


text:
[Deborah McDonald [email@example.com] has kindly shared these materials from her Collet website with the Victorian Web. Her biography of Collet was published by Woburn Press in November 2003]
Two millions of people, or thereabout, live in the East End of London. That seems a good-sized population for an utterly unknown town. They have no institutions of their own to speak of, no public buildings of any importance, no municipality, no gentry, no carriages . . . they have nothing. It is the fashion to believe that they are all paupers, which is a foolish and mischievous belief . . . Probably there is no spectacle in the whole world as that of this immense, neglected, forgotten great city of East London. It is even neglected by its own citizens, who have never yet perceived their abandoned condition. -- Walter Besant, All Sorts and Conditions of Men -- An Impossible Story (1882)
In order to try to quantify the full extent of poverty in London, especially in the East End, Charles Booth began his great statistical work in 1886. He employed a team of researchers in order to aid him in this work. He was very selective as to whom he took on to aid in this work, and most of the researchers were university-qualified men. However, from the start, his wife's cousin, Beatrice Potter (later Webb) had been involved in his work collecting statistics relating to the Tailoring Trade, the Docks, and the Jewish Community. She was not university trained and in fact was largely self-taught as were many upper class women of her time. Booth wanted someone to take on the large task of quantifying women's work in the East End and asked Beatrice if she would undertake this task. However, she was,
In a dreadful perplexity about my work. Charlie wants me to do "Women's Work at the East End and have it ready by March, which means sacrificing part of February to writing . . . On the other hand, "Female Labour is a subject of growing importance . . . Then the work is needed to complete Charlie's book and I own him consideration. (The Diary of Beatrice Webb, 3 November 1888).
When overwork and the engagement of Joseph Chamberlain, about whom she had harboured romantic hopes, brought on nervous collapse, Booth was forced to look elsewhere. Needing someone reliable, level headed, and well educated to complete the work, he chose Clara Collet.
Collet had an MA in Political Economy from University College London. She had links with Toynbee Hall where she had undertaken several lectures -- a privilege, as women were not permitted to stay at this male institution set up by the universities in order to improve the education of the East End people. Several of Booth's other investigators had links with Toynbee Hall, and it may have been as a result of this connection that she came in contact with Booth. The two may also have met ay various clubs to which both she and Booth belonged.
Whatever the background to Booth and Collet's collaboration, by the autumn of 1888 Clara Collet had embarked on four months of hard investigative work in the East End. As Booth said as part of his input into the Labour Commission into industrial relations (British Parliamentary Papers, vol 27, Labour Commission),
We [ie Collet and Booth] then sought assistance from some societies that interest themselves in the condition of the factory girls. I think the principal one is called the Factory Girls' Helpers Union . . . the object being to obtain introductions to the girls, to find a road, so that we might become acquainted with them. And Miss Collet in connection with that took up her residence in the East End, and lived there for three months (she gave altogether four months to the work), and during that three months she was continually engaged in trying to come in contact with the girls, and those who were working amongst them. . . . She would become acquainted with the girls and invite them to her house.
One can only imagine the chatter of these young women drinking their cups of tea in Collet's East End home as they told her of their plight to survive. Some of them informed Collet that the seasonal nature of their work forced them to walk the streets at night in order to supplement their income. It was autumn 1888; women like these were the very targets of Jack the Ripper who was weekly adding victims to his list of casualties.
Collet was given her own assistant, and together they compiled the quite substantial section on "Women's Work" for Booth. The work was well researched, well documented, and well received. The quality is considered to be superior to that contributed by Beatrice Potter and added considerably to knowledge about all aspects of women's work in the East End from confectioner to fur puller, from laundress to umbrella maker. Collet makes few value judgements although she does blame prostitution and degeneracy in the area upon low wages rather than upon any inherent condition of the women concerned.
"Women's Work" gave Collet the training and experience necessary to enable her to be offered employment as Labour Correspondent for the Board of Trade, thus setting up her future career. In time she became considered the expert on women's work in Britain.
Last modified 1996


text:
TRAVERSE CITY, MICH. — Nissan North America is pulling back from a strategy of buying parts from low-cost countries and is now encouraging suppliers to locate near its U.S. assembly plants instead.
"It's a step away from the practice of using low-cost countries for our parts," said Chris Styles, Nissan's senior director of logistics and supply chain management.
Styles said Tuesday at the 2014 Management Briefing Seminars that the shift is a return to a previous logistics strategy. In 2003, Nissan was among the first automakers in the United States to open an integrated supplier park at its then-new Canton, Miss., assembly plant. At that time, Nissan brought several suppliers into an on-site building to perform parts-assembly work within walking distance of the Canton vehicle assembly line.
Nissan slipped away from that practice in the years that followed, Styles said. But several recent global challenges -- a destructive tsunami in Japan, flooding in Thailand and unpredictable foreign currency changes -- prompted Nissan to re-develop the on-site supplier concept, he said.
Nissan will open a 1.5 million-square-foot supplier center in Canton this year, and a similar new facility at its plant in Smyrna, Tenn. Each one will house an undetermined number of suppliers that currently operate out of state.
"We look at commodities that make the most sense," Styles said of which parts it wants closer at hand. Those include parts that are difficult to or expensive to transport.
"We focus our resources on the ones that give us to the most bang for the buck."
The Canton operation will launch with the start of Murano crossover production there in October.
"When you have a new model, you may have a supplier who has to expand or invest somewhere," he explained. "You can create the argument that, since they have to expand anyway, their best option is for them to do that is here with us."


text:
Auckland, New Zealand—Maybe that ban on large sodas implemented in New York City isn't necessary; just tax them, and people will buy them less. So says a new paper published in PLoS Medicine, which also found that making healthy foods like fruit cheaper will increase their intake among consumers.
Researchers examined 32 previous studies that looked at the impact of pricing on food consumption from various angles, with like studies being grouped together for better analysis. It was discovered that on average, a 1% increase in the price of carbonated soft drinks corresponds with a 0.93% decrease in soft drink consumption. According to the statistical range determined by the researchers, they concluded that a 10% increase in the price of soft drinks could lead to a nearly 25% decrease in consumption in some populations.
The reduction in energy intake of saturated fats was reduced by 0.02% when prices went up 1%. Lastly, it was found that a 1% reduction in the price of fruits and vegetables increases consumption by 0.35%. But some of the analyzed studies indicated that subsidizing fruits and vegetables might lead consumers to purchase less of other healthy foods like fish.
Published in WholeFoods Magazine, February 2013 (online 12/19/12)


text:
Choosing the Right Garage Door for Your Needs
When you pick a new garage door for your home, consider garage door materials and looks that match your lifestyle and location. Security, children, garage usage, style and climate are all factors to take into account.
Not all garages are used as parking spots. Those used as workshops or recreation rooms need different doors than a parking spot. Consider insulating a garage used as a living space. It will cut heating and cooling costs and increase comfort. The best insulation option is polystyrene or polyurethane sandwiched between layers of steel, with weather stripping.
Consider translucent glass or polycarbon for a workshop in a mild climate. These doors provide minimal insulation, but can create a good, well-lit workspace, allowing in light while maintaining privacy.
Sectional doors may be unnecessary and inconvenient for a workshop. Use swinging doors or buy a sectional door with an additional regular door. Dutch doors can create a distinctive look and let in fresh air without letting kids and pets escape easily. Finally, sliding doors keep the space in front of the garage clear for parking a car while allowing for easy opening.
Some cheap fiberglass or plastic garage doors in cold climates may crack or break in freezing temperatures. Steel and wood stand up to the cold. On the other hand, wet weather and salt air take their toll on metal and wood. Fiberglass and plastics might be a cheaper and better option in wet, warm areas.
Safety and durability are important for homes with children. A driveway basketball hoop should probably be mounted above a dent-resistant 24-gauge steel door. Ironically, a lower number steel gauge means the metal is stronger. 25-gauge steel is thinner than 24-gauge steel.
Also, look for a garage door with pinch-resistant sectional design so little fingers won't be caught between slats as the door rolls shut. Replace any garage door opener that predates 1992. It may not have modern sensors that stop the door when an object gets in the way.
If security is a major concern, steel is once again the best choice for a door material. In terms of openers, new garage door openers have a combination of one million random codes. The code is reset each time the door opens, making it difficult for would-be thieves to drive by the garage and open the door with another remote.
Other Considerations
Of course, design is another important consideration: Choose among modern looks and classic styles, such as carriage-house replicas. Also, a roll-up may not be practical if you need extra clearance for your vehicle or have a low ceiling.
Finally, keep the garage door opening at a standard width so future homeowners can easily convert the space back into a traditional garage.
Climate, children, lifestyle, safety and design are important in choosing a new garage door. Once you've chosen the right door, be sure to contact your local garage door installation company to get it installed!
Looking for a Pro? Call us(866) 441-6648


text:
So I am using the Upload.aspx for doc lib with GUID in order to have Upload at a custom spot on a page. I think its the edit form that pops up right after you upload a document to add the metadata. This is great and what I need, however there is one little piece I need some help with. If I set the options for the dialog I am using with the Upload.aspx the width and height stick for the edit form that pops open after and either way it looks bad. I either make a ridiculously large dialog for the upload to accomodate the edit, or visa versa.
So I am guessing there is a way to handle that in the callback, just not really sure.
Here is basically what I am calling from an onclick:
function openDialog() {
var dialogOptions = SP.UI.$create_DialogOptions();
dialogOptions.url = "server/site/_layouts/Upload.aspx?List={GUID}&IsDlg=1";
dialogOptions.width = 700 //works for the upload not for the edit
dialogOptions.height = 185 //same as above; works for the upload
dialogOptions.title = "My Title"
dialogOptions.dialogReturnValueCallback = Function.createDelegate(null, CloseCallBack);
SP.UI.ModalDialog.showModalDialog(dialogOptions); }
function CloseCallBack (result, returnValue) {
if (result == SP.UI.DialogResult.OK) {
// logic
} else {
// logic
Is there someway to remedy this? thanks as always for you help guys! always appreciated.


text: This letter is for all who travel the Sterling Highway through Anchor Point. The Anchor Point Volunteer Fire Department is on Milo Fritz Road which intersects the Sterling Highway. My husband and I have lived in Anchor Point for 12 years, and we can see and hear when an emergency vehicle is coming out onto the highway with lights flashing and sirens blaring. It appalls us that the traffic on the Sterling Highway fails to yield to let the emergency vehicle out. It not only creates a hazard, it also delays the response time.


text:
If you built a raft with a big sea anchor and pushed off from Point Pogibshi, you'd drift east along Kachemak Bay on the south shore, turn left at the Homer Spit and eventually circle around the north shore and go west toward Bluff Point, spinning back around in a big gyre.
Or, maybe not. You could wind up at the head of the bay. You could be pushed out into Cook Inlet. In a big storm and tide you could get washed up on the beach.
How long something — rafts, larval crabs or spilled oil — would take to circle the bay and where it would go are some of the questions being studied by a two-year ocean circulation project done by the Kachemak Bay Research Reserve and the University of Alaska Fairbanks Institute of Marine Science. On Monday at noon and 6 p.m., scientists present some of their findings at the Alaska Islands and Ocean Visitor Center. Another presentation is at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday at the Seldovia Library.
Drift studies have been done before, but those involved numbered cards dropped into the bay. Because the cards floated on the surface, they were affected both by ocean currents and winds. The new study looks at sub-surface currents, the forces that move kelp, seaweed, young crabs and other plankton at the mercy of tides and currents. The effect on crabs is one reason to do the study, said scientist Steve Baird of the research reserve.
"Circulation patterns are very important for a lot of things, but especially for moving larval fish and crabs around," he said. "Larval fish are basically planktonic."
Since April of 2012, Baird and other scientists have been setting loose in the spring and summer small buoys with satellite tracking transmitters. Surface drifters, a red-and-white 10-inch wide buoy, have a 3- to 6-foot long drogue — essentially, a big underwater sail — that catches the upper currents. The deep drifters are black and 18-inches wide and have a drogue about 50-feet long to catch deeper currents.
"What's really moving them around is that underwater drogue, whatever depth it's at," Baird said.
Both types of drifters can be tracked on a password-protected website. That's the science — seeing where the drifters go at certain times of the year related to tides, storms and other forces. Tracking the drifters by satellite also helps them get found when they get lost.
"They get picked up by people or end up on a beach," Baird said. "Sometimes they end up being souvenirs."
Researchers found one such drifter far from Kachemak Bay and tracked it to a cabin on Petersville Road near Talkeetna.
If found drifting in the bay, Baird said mariners should let it wander in the water. If found washed up on the beach, usually from storms or an extreme tide, people should pick up the drifter and return it to the research reserve offices at the Alaska Islands and Ocean Visitor Center or call 235-4799.
People have been generally supportive of the study, Baird said.
Figuring out the currents of the bay will help biologists better understand life cycles of things like Tanner and Dungeness crabs. One theory for why Kachemak Bay's crab populations haven't recovered from overfishing is that the local adult population was depleted and juvenile crabs pushed in from other areas by currents also get pushed out. The general bay circulation pattern is a gyre spinning counterclockwise looking north, with the south shore current running east and the north shore current running west.
The study also will help predict where things like invasive species or oil spills might wind up in Kachemak Bay. The research also can be used for search and rescue to find mariners lost at sea and floating in life rafts or survival suits.
"I think there are all sorts of benefits for understanding the circulation patterns of the bay," Baird said.
The current turns somewhere off the end of the Spit, but some drifters have gone into the inner bay. Scientists know that can happen to things like bull kelp, which has been found at the head of the bay.
There's a bit of chaos to the pattern, though. Side bays like Sadie Cove and Tutka Bay have their own patterns which can affect the larger bay. Currents from outflow like glacial runoff affect the circulation pattern, as do lower Cook Inlet and upper Cook Inlet circulation patterns. What goes on in the winter, with the effects of ice and storms, scientists don't know. Because the research reserve doesn't keep boats in the water in the winter and ends the drift study in October, a late fall-winter study hasn't been done.
Mark Johnson, professor of physical oceanography at the UAF Institute of Marine Science, will analyze the two years of data and write up a report in the near future. Johnson has already done a similar report on Cook Inlet circulation patterns. As much as scientists learn, the new information won't answer every question.
"Like any study we'll probably end up generating more questions than answers, but that's great," Baird said.
Michael Armstrong can be reached at firstname.lastname@example.com.
Kachemak Bay Circulation Patterns
What: A study with satellite-tracked drifters to determine current circulation patterns in Kachemak Bay
Who: The Kachemak Bay Research Reserve and the University of Alaska Fairbanks, funded by the Coastal Impact Assistance Program
When: Spring and summer of 2012 and 2013
How: Scientists deploy satellite-tracked drift buoys with drogues to analyze deep- and shallow-water currents
Learn more:
Monday, Noon-1 p.m.,
brown-bag lunch presentation
6-7:30 p.m., discussion forum
Alaska Islands and Ocean Visitor Center
Tuesday, 6:30-8 p.m. presentation and discussion
Seldovia Library


text:
2017 Photography Competition "MY MACAU, MY LOVE"
The IIM launches the contest: MY MACAU, MY LOVE which is governed by the present regulation, in the plead to preserve Macau's uniqueness, to enhance the sense of belonging amongst the citizens, particularly in the younger generation, and to promote the identity concept based on cultural and historical values of Macau.
This contest has the objective to foster the knowledge amongst citizens, especially of the young people, about the heritage assets of Macau and the traditions that shaped Macau's culture.
For any question or information, please contact IIM (28751727) or visit its homepage at www.iimacau.org.mo or call the Macao Digital Photography Association (Mr. Yen at 66898686).
Promotional Video
Promotional Poster


text:
Kill appreciative of raise, extension at Minnesota
Minnesota coach Jerry Kill answered his telephone not long after having his annual compensation boosted to more than $2 million.
His brother was calling.
''You ain't worth that,'' he told Kill from their native Kansas. ''I'm sitting here working on beef cattle, and they're paying you that to coach football? Is this country crazy?''
Kill just laughed.
''I can't answer that question,'' he said.
With his farmhand humility and homespun humor, Kill spoke Monday at a news conference about his newly enhanced contract and upcoming spring practice. He said he was appreciative of the hefty raise and the extra year on the contract, but he said he's ''getting paid way too much'' in the same sentence he mentioned his daughter makes $29,000 a year doing inner-city work.
''I'm the same guy that lived in a trailer house for five years and made $250 a month,'' Kill said, referencing his climb up the coaching ladder from Webb City High School in Missouri to Division II schools Saginaw Valley State and Emporia State to the FCS level with Southern Illinois, a mid-major program at Northern Illinois and finally to the Big Ten at Minnesota.
Kill's restructured contract includes a stipulation that the total pay for his top nine assistant coaches must rank in the top six of the conference. He said he wouldn't have signed the deal without that. He also said he sees this contract as a sign to recruits of stability and progress.
''We're building a program. It'll take time. We want to be smart about what we pay anyone, and we want to be good stewards of our finances,'' athletic director Norwood Teague said. ''It's a building program, and we want to do the best we can every day and see where it lands down the road.''
The Gophers are 17-21 in three seasons under Kill. He has come far enough in his fight with epilepsy that he's back behind the wheel. State law requires licensed drivers to be at least three months without a seizure.
''I'm driving, but not very far. That's one goal,'' Kill said. ''My second goal is to make everybody proud of Gopher football. I think we've moved forward on that.''
University President Eric Kaler has consistently supported Kill's capability to succeed at the job over the long term, even while he had to miss some time last fall to treat his condition. Seizures kept Kill from traveling to the game at Michigan Oct. 6.
The schedule of bonuses was also adjusted. The highlight of the new language in this deal is an incentive based on annual home game attendance. If the average figure is 49,000 fans or more over a season, Kill will get $75,000. If it's 47,000 or higher, he'll get $50,000.
Also: Kill confirmed that linebackers coach Bill Miller has taken the same job at national champion Florida State.
Associated Press freelance writer Al Schoch contributed to this report.


text: It feels like a musical theater fan's dream, but it's really happening. And we have the photo to prove it! Here's the Divine Miss M as Miss Dolly Gallagher Levi in the new revival of Hello, Dolly!, starting performances at the Shubert Theatre on March 15. Midler leads a cast that includes Tony winner David Hyde Pierce, Gavin Creel, Kate Baldwin, Taylor Trensch, Beanie Feldstein and more. Well hello, Dolly, indeed!


text:
It's been a strangely prolific week publishing-wise. Literally within a few days of each other, I held in my hands two new books with my name on it.
As you might gather from their cover, they couldn't be more different.
The first is a book that lays out my ideas on globalization and its future, in what I hope is an accessible form. It took a long time to write, and an even longer time to develop. It won't be available in the bookstores until February.
The second, written with my wife Pinar Dogan, is in Turkish and covers the most important political trial in Turkey in at least five decades, which has just opened. It is based on our blog on the topic, and was written within weeks. Amazingly, the publisher had it in bookstores within 10 days of receiving the final manuscript. (Not to be outdone, Norton, my American publisher, tells me that if necessary they can get a book from finished manuscript to bookstores in 6 days!)
The Globalization Paradox is a book on economic policy and on economic ideas. It is, in a sense, my life's work.
Balyoz is a legal and political exposé. It details a brazen effort to frame nearly 200 officers for crimes they have not committed. It documents the roles that groups within the judiciary, police, media, intelligentsia, the national science and technological institute, and (last but not least), the AKP government have played in creating what can best be called an "alternative reality." (Balyoz means "sledgehammer" in Turkish; it refers to the code name of the fictional coup plot on which the book is based.) This is a book I never thought I would (have to) write.
Both books aim to inject a dose of common sense and reality – the first to our narrative on globalization, the second to Turkey's increasingly authoritarian politics.


text:
This article is Part 1 of a series of 3 articles that I am going to post. The proposed article content will be as follows:
Nerve cells in the brain are called neurons. There is an estimated 1010 to the power(1013) neurons in the human brain. Each neuron can make contact with several thousand other neurons. Neurons are the unit which the brain uses to process information.
A neuron consists of a cell body, with various extensions from it. Most of these are branches called dendrites. There is one much longer process (possibly also branching) called the axon. The dashed line shows the axon hillock, where transmission of signals starts
The following diagram illustrates this.
Figure 1 Neuron
The boundary of the neuron is known as the cell membrane. There is a voltage difference (the membrane potential) between the inside and outside of the membrane.
If the input is large enough, an action potential is then generated. The action potential (neuronal spike) then travels down the axon, away from the cell body.
Figure 2 Neuron Spiking
The connections between one neuron and another are called synapses. Information always leaves a neuron via its axon (see Figure 1 above), and is then transmitted across a synapse to the receiving neuron.
Neurons only fire when input is bigger than some threshold. It should, however, be noted that firing doesn't get bigger as the stimulus increases, its an all or nothing arrangement.
Figure 3 Neuron Firing
Spikes (signals) are important, since other neurons receive them. Neurons communicate with spikes. The information sent is coded by spikes.
Synapses can be excitatory or inhibitory.
Spikes (signals) arriving at an excitatory synapse tend to cause the receiving neuron to fire. Spikes (signals) arriving at an inhibitory synapse tend to inhibit the receiving neuron from firing.
The cell body and synapses essentially compute (by a complicated chemical/electrical process) the difference between the incoming excitatory and inhibitory inputs (spatial and temporal summation).
When this difference is large enough (compared to the neuron's threshold) then the neuron will fire.
Roughly speaking, the faster excitatory spikes arrive at its synapses the faster it will fire (similarly for inhibitory spikes).
Suppose that we have a firing rate at each neuron. Also suppose that a neuron connects with m other neurons and so receives m-many inputs "x1 …. … xm", we could imagine this configuration looking something like:
Figure 4 Artificial Neuron configuration
This configuration is actually called a Perceptron. The perceptron (an invention of Rosenblatt [1962]), was one of the earliest neural network models. A perceptron models a neuron by taking a weighted sum of inputs and sending the output 1, if the sum is greater than some adjustable threshold value (otherwise it sends 0 - this is the all or nothing spiking described in the biology, see neuron firing section above) also called an activation function.
The inputs (x1,x2,x3..xm) and connection weights (w1,w2,w3..wm) in Figure 4 are typically real values, both postive (+) and negative (-). If the feature of some xi tends to cause the perceptron to fire, the weight wi will be positive; if the feature xi inhibits the perceptron, the weight wi will be negative.
The perceptron itself, consists of weights, the summation processor, and an activation function, and an adjustable threshold processor (called bias here after).
For convenience the normal practice is to treat the bias, as just another input. The following diagram illustrates the revised configuration.
Figure 5 Artificial Neuron configuration, with bias as additinal input
The bias can be thought of as the propensity (a tendency towards a particular way of behaving) of the perceptron to fire irrespective of its inputs. The perceptron configuration network shown in Figure 5 fires if the weighted sum > 0, or if you're into math-type explanations
The activation usually uses one of the following functions.
The stronger the input, the faster the neuron fires (the higher the firing rates). The sigmoid is also very useful in multi-layer networks, as the sigmoid curve allows for differentation (which is required in Back Propogation training of multi layer networks).
or if your into maths type explanations
A basic on/off type function, if 0 > x then 0, else if x >= 0 then 1
or if your into math-type explanations
Before we carry on to talk about perceptron learning lets consider a real world example :
How do you teach a child to recognize a chair? You show him examples, telling him, "This is a chair. That is not a chair," until the child learns the concept of what a chair is. In this stage, the child can look at the examples we have shown him and answer correctly when asked, "Is this object a chair?"
Furthermore, if we show to the child new objects that he hasn't seen before, we could expect him to recognize correctly whether the new object is a chair or not, providing that we've given him enough positive and negative examples.
This is exactly the idea behind the perceptron.
Is the process of modifying the weights and the bias. A perceptron computes a binary function of its input. Whatever a perceptron can compute it can learn to compute.
"The perceptron is a program that learn concepts, i.e. it can learn to respond with True (1) or False (0) for inputs we present to it, by repeatedly "studying" examples presented to it.
The Perceptron is a single layer neural network whose weights and biases could be trained to produce a correct target vector when presented with the corresponding input vector. The training technique used is called the perceptron learning rule. The perceptron generated great interest due to its ability to generalize from its training vectors and work with randomly distributed connections. Perceptrons are especially suited for simple problems in pattern classification."
Professor Jianfeng feng, Centre for Scientific Computing, Warwick university, England.
The perceptron is trained to respond to each input vector with a corresponding target output of either 0 or 1. The learning rule has been proven to converge on a solution in finite time if a solution exists.
The learning rule can be summarized in the following two equations:
b = b + [ T - A ]
For all inputs i:
W(i) = W(i) + [ T - A ] * P(i)
Where W is the vector of weights, P is the input vector presented to the network, T is the correct result that the neuron should have shown, A is the actual output of the neuron, and b is the bias.
Vectors from a training set are presented to the network one after another.
If the network's output is correct, no change is made.
Otherwise, the weights and biases are updated using the perceptron learning rule (as shown above). When each epoch (an entire pass through all of the input training vectors is called an epoch) of the training set has occured without error, training is complete.
At this time any input training vector may be presented to the network and it will respond with the correct output vector. If a vector, P, not in the training set is presented to the network, the network will tend to exhibit generalization by responding with an output similar to target vectors for input vectors close to the previously unseen input vector P.
Well if we are going to stick to using a single layer neural network, the tasks that can be achieved are different from those that can be achieved by multi-layer neural networks. As this article is mainly geared towards dealing with single layer networks, let's dicuss those further:
Single-layer neural networks (perceptron networks) are networks in which the output unit is independent of the others - each weight effects only one output. Using perceptron networks it is possible to achieve linear seperability functions like the diagrams shown below (assuming we have a network with 2 inputs and 1 output)
It can be seen that this is equivalent to the AND / OR logic gates, shown below.
Figure 6 Classification tasks
So that's a simple example of what we could do with one perceptron (single neuron essentially), but what if we were to chain several perceptrons together? We could build some quite complex functionality. Basically we would be constructing the equivalent of an electronic circuit.
Perceptron networks do however, have limitations. If the vectors are not linearly separable, learning will never reach a point where all vectors are classified properly. The most famous example of the perceptron's inability to solve problems with linearly nonseparable vectors is the boolean XOR problem.
With muti-layer neural networks we can solve non-linear seperable problems such as the XOR problem mentioned above, which is not acheivable using single layer (perceptron) networks. The next part of this article series will show how to do this using muti-layer neural networks, using the back propogation training method.
Well that's about it for this article. I hope it's a nice introduction to neural networks. I will try and publish the other two articles when I have some spare time (in between MSc disseration and other assignments). I want them to be pretty graphical so it may take me a while, but i'll get there soon, I promise.
Thats it, I would just like to ask, if you liked the article please vote for it.
I think AI is fairly interesting, that's why I am taking the time to publish these articles. So I hope someone else finds it interesting, and that it might help further someones knowledge, as it has my own.
v1.0 17/11/06
Artificial Intelligence 2nd edition, Elaine Rich / Kevin Knight. McGraw Hill Inc.
Artificial Intelligence, A Modern Approach, Stuart Russell / Peter Norvig. Prentice Hall.
This article, along with any associated source code and files, is licensed under The Code Project Open License (CPOL)
I am lucky enough to have won a few awards for Zany Crazy code articles over the years
General News Suggestion Question Bug Answer Joke Praise Rant Admin
Use Ctrl+Left/Right to switch messages, Ctrl+Up/Down to switch threads, Ctrl+Shift+Left/Right to switch pages.